News that HP is to buy Palm for $1.2 billion led analysts to tout the company's threat to Apple in the smartphone market. True, the firm will have strong retailer relationships via HP's PC franchise, and Palm's WebOS is a worthy iPhone competitor. Yet there could be a far more lucrative -- if less sexy -- alternative. HP should be creating a new market for enterprise smartphone deployment.

HP is a titan in the enterprise computing market. It has a full line of products for the datacenter, is the world's largest PC maker, recently bought 3Com for its leadership in networking equipment, and has a massive IT services business. Very few other firms have this collection of assets. As enterprises increasingly eye mobile platforms (including Apple's iPad) for tailored applications, these assets could become very useful. For instance, independent application developers cannot easily integrate their apps with enterprise databases, nor are they set up to create custom deployments of sophisticated apps requiring both mobile device and backend work. Think of a hospital seeking to give physicians immediate, searchable access to radiology images as they do their rounds -- this can be technically challenging.​As enterprises begin to think of ways to leverage mobile devices far beyond the apps that exist today, HP can help them imagine what is possible and implement the full solution. This can be a highly lucrative market that would entrench HP in the enterprise much like SAP is in some corporate environments today. Total device volumes may be small at first, but would grow as companies see how much these systems can do. Moreover, it is a new market that HP could own.

Leafing through the Wall Street Journal this week, I saw a familiar face -- Cyriac Roeding, once Co-Founder with me of the Mobile Marketing Association and now CEO of a successful mobile marketing start-up called Shopkick. Nearly ten years ago, Cyriac and I led two of the first companies creating ways for advertisers to use cellphones as marketing platforms. Back then, consumers were keenly interested in participating in these marketing campaigns, for example through receiving special offers or engaging in SMS conversations with their favorite brands. But we were too early, and had great challenges convincing firms to spend significant sums on this new channel. In hindsight, did we miss some key signals of market readiness?

Mobile marketing is a great idea: cellphones offer unparalleled ways to provide consumers with highly customized, interactive ads that draw people into an ongoing dialogue with their brands. For instance, people can receive special offers in their favorite retail categories when shopping at a mall. Pepsi drinkers were asked on soda cans to text in why they should be chosen to practice with the England soccer team, and then engaged in an ongoing SMS conversation about the team. The mobile medium creates possibilities for tailoring and engagement that Internet advertising just can't match. So why did advertisers hesitate to jump in?

The problem wasn't a lack of consumers ready to receive the ads. Cyriac's firm (12snap) had a community of people -- largely teens -- who had signed up to participate in mobile auctions and other forms of mobile content. My company (initially Saverfone, later bought by Brainstorm) had deals with T-Mobile, AOL, and others to sign up their subscribers to receive special offers, and several thousand did. Technology wasn't a significant hurdle either, particularly for SMS-based ads.

Organizations frustrated with their innovation capabilities sometimes seek inspiration from the world's most innovative firms. Too frequently, this can lead to a misguided quest for beanbag furniture. The most visible trappings of innovative firms arise after management has already created an environment that facilitates the rapid creation and testing of ideas -- they are a result of innovation, not its cause. The real infrastructure underlying innovation capabilities tends to be less flashy: clear strategies, distinct approaches for disruptive innovations, HR policies that tolerate failure, rigorous systems to capture project learnings, and the like.

But once in a while we find flash that really works, for any kind of firm. Facebook's Hackathons fit the bill. With the company having grown from tiny start-up to 1,200 employees in 6 years, management has worried about how to retain entrepreneurial flexibility and imagination. One way Facebook has kept its verve is the Hackathon -- an all-night quest to dream up an idea and make it real, immediately. This isn't just for engineers; marketing and even legal regularly attend. Anything is fair game, and resulting ideas have ranged from video messaging to a friend suggester. Facebook users can suggest ideas too. Usually the result of one night's work isn't something ready to go live on the site, but it is real enough to trigger detailed discussion and feedback.

The Hackathon can have plenty of flash (click for a short video) but don't be fooled by the sizzle -- the guts of this idea apply anywhere:

Citigroup has quietly declared defeat. In 2008, it became the first major American bank to experiment with mobile payments – using cellphones to buy products and transfer money. But the envisaged uses of this service, called Obopay, did not materialize. The technology is trivial, but consumers saw little need to pay their restaurant bills by cellphone, replacing cards and cash which are familiar, reliable, and easy.

What can we learn from this failure?

Citi seems to have embraced mobile payments like a bank, trying to force-fit an intriguing technology into existing applications. Organizations often err this way – look, for instance, at large solar energy projects being subsidized to generate power for the electrical grid, rather than in off-grid, small-scale applications. People initially viewed the telephone as competition for messenger boys. The examples are endless. ​What the bank found was that people used Obopay to meet other, unmet needs. Up to half of users were parents providing a weekly allowance to their children. Another big source of usage came from small business owners who did not accept electronic payments but wanted to replace cash. These were surprises.

Radical change is scary. A revolution in business model brings forth images of Robespierre and the guillotine. Understandably, companies are hesitant to move radically when there are more conservative options. Yet there are times when firms need to at least scope out how this change could occur, because they find themselves tied to the tracks with a locomotive fast approaching.

American health insurance firms may now be in just such a situation. Health reform threatens to wipe out traditional sources of profit – Medicare Advantage, individual policies, and small group insurance – while imposing many restraints on pricing and plan design. Moreover, it may lead to commoditization of these payers’ offerings, and do little to address the long-term cost increases which have employers aggressively cutting back on the coverage they provide. To add to these challenges, in just four years the law will push insurers to become far more consumer-centric than ever before if they are to compete effectively on the forthcoming health insurance exchanges. American consumers report that health insurers are the third least-trusted industry they deal with, just behind tobacco and oil companies. It’s bleak.

In this environment, I spent the day at a large healthcare conference full of insurance executives. One might expect a brew of intense discussion and deep reflection. Not so. An example of innovation lauded in the conference was how one firm re-designed their forms to have more plain English. This is of course a good thing, but not much of a new business model. ​We often see denial in the face of fundamental industry change. Pharmaceutical firms understood a long time ago that they would face a cliff of patent expiries around 2010, yet took years to charter new drug discovery programs, resulting in a substantial gap in their development pipelines. Oil companies are just now coming around to the realization that the electric vehicle is a major threat to their business. It is easy to find comfort in what our peer firms are doing, even when a gnawing feeling grows that we are all marching together to doom.

The start of April 2010 juxtaposed two intriguing events. First, Dr. Ed Roberts passed away. While he lived the quiet life of a country doctor in recent years, Roberts made history in 1975 through creating the first personal computer, the Altair 8800. The day after Roberts death made news, Apple began selling its iPad, which the company touts as a revolution in computing.

While Roberts was deeply respected in a small community – Bill Gates recently visited at his bedside – he made relatively little from his invention, which catered to a hobbyist market. By contrast, the iPad has reportedly done quite well in its first weekend, with up to 700,000 units sold. The stark difference raises a key question often asked about early movers: when does a pioneer find gold, instead of arrows in his back?

The originator of the term "disruptive innovation," Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, has built on the work of Øystein Fjeldstad at the Norgewian School of Management to suggest that there are three general types of business models: solution shops that create customized offerings, value chain businesses that produce standardized outputs, and facilitated networks that enable interactions. While there is of course much color that overlays this basic sketch, the three models help in explaining when the timing is right for early movers.